Althouse: "In the early to mid-2010s, when high schoolers today were in elementary school, many schools practiced — and still practice

December 26, 2022

"In the early to mid-2010s, when high schoolers today were in elementary school, many schools practiced — and still practice — 'balanced literacy'..."

"... which focuses on fostering a love of books and storytelling. Instruction may include some phonics, but also other strategies, like prompting children to use context clues — such as pictures — to guess words, a technique that has been heavily criticized for turning children away from the letters themselves. For at least part of the time, Memphis was using a popular curriculum called Journeys. Its publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, described it in a statement as a comprehensive program 'grounded in research and backed by scientific evidence,' with daily, systematic instruction on literacy skills, including phonics, and 'a variety of resources to support teachers.' But Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied reading, described the program as 'the legacy of balanced literacy' because it offers teachers many options, some more effective than others. 'There are things in there that would allow teachers to teach many different ways — and that is the problem,' he said."

From "In Memphis, the Phonics Movement Comes to High School/Literacy lessons are embedded in every academic class. Even in biology" (NYT)."

59 comments:

Michael K said...: Phonics were boring to Ed School academics. They were always looking for something new. Every fad that came along was adopted. They didn't work but they were new ideas.; 12/26/22, 11:12 AM
Iman said...: Lowest Common Denominator; 12/26/22, 11:14 AM
gspencer said...: "like prompting children to use context clues — such as pictures — to guess words"

Systemic, intensive phonics means a reader NEVER has to guess. 26 letters, 44 sounds. That's it.; 12/26/22, 11:23 AM
Joe Smith said...: Millions of kids learned phonics and 'sounding out' the letters/words and it worked perfectly well.

Why fuck with it?

The 'scientific' claims sound like something from a traveling medicine show...; 12/26/22, 11:46 AM
robother said...: Balancing literacy with...illiteracy?; 12/26/22, 11:49 AM
Ampersand said...: There should be a sense of urgency about this issue, and instead I see "business as usual" from administrators, teachers and (too many) parents. We're evolving toward two tiers, a managerial class that has access to information, and an underclass that either does what it's told or faces the consequences.
Piketty should have focused on the inequitable distribution of access to knowledge. There's an inequity that, unlike wealth inequity, can be reduced without harming economic growth.; 12/26/22, 11:49 AM
Kate said...: Human intuition and adaptability have a use, especially when teaching other humans who all learn differently. Either trust in them, or let a computer teach the children. It will succeed for most of the bell curve.; 12/26/22, 12:10 PM
Temujin said...: Yes, I was easily ensnared by the phrase '...grounded in research and backed by scientific evidence,'....

Reminds me of the good ole days of covid.
Or climate theory.
Or gender theory.; 12/26/22, 12:21 PM
Carol said...: Yeah they need it. Kids are reading way below level..I don't know why exactly, but reddit teachers rant about it every day.

Kids have no books in the home, parents don't read, students bitch about every book assignment. They don't even want to watch a movie of the book.

Lol rough road ahead.; 12/26/22, 12:23 PM
Yancey Ward said...: It is a pity there isn't centuries worth of experience in how to teach children to read.; 12/26/22, 12:40 PM
n.n said...: Transliteracy.; 12/26/22, 12:50 PM
Kathryn51 said...: 'There are things in there that would allow teachers to teach many different ways — and that is the problem,' he said."

In other words, teachers coming out of 4 years of college that teach "methods" and child psychology but can't write a coherent and grammatically correct sentence to save their lives, are happy to rely upon pictures and "storytelling".; 12/26/22, 1:05 PM
gilbar said...: i've read reports about 'balanced literacy'.. It seems Really Effective; at making illiterates; 12/26/22, 1:51 PM
Mr. T. said...: How many of us grew up on "StoryLords," our own home grown goverment television program that was such a blatantly obvious Star Wars ripoff out of the UW Stout System. It skipped over phonics, and yes, even reading comprehension for "whole view reading strategy" (whatever the *@$& that is supposed to mean). The result of this? Kids are told to skip over words and sentences if they don't understand, and a bunch of students taking remedial grammer and launguage in HS because we trusted the ed experts.; 12/26/22, 2:02 PM
stlcdr said...: Why does it feel like the education system was created yesterday?; 12/26/22, 2:03 PM
ConradBibby said...: From the article: "Students can struggle with reading for many reasons: the impact of poverty and trauma, the challenge of learning English as a second language, learning disabilities, the quality of instruction."

How about the quality of parenting? How about the quantity of parenting? Of course, the NYT wouldn't even consider those as factors.

The issue of teen illiteracy isn't going to be solved by choosing teaching method "A" over teaching method "B." It's fundamentally a problem of commitment on the part of parents and schools to make reading and writing a priority. Of course, that's unlikely to change so long as kids are being born into families where the parents are barely educated themselves and have no greater ambition for themselves or their kids than to play video games, watch tv, do drugs, and live off government support.; 12/26/22, 2:10 PM
Michael said...: Still, just 21 percent of students districtwide are meeting state standards in English.

Educational malpractice.; 12/26/22, 2:48 PM
tim maguire said...: prompting children to use context clues — such as pictures — to guess words

Sure, if your goal is to read comic books. I should think most parents want their children to aim higher.; 12/26/22, 3:00 PM
Birches said...: This podcast on non phonics based reading instruction will infuriate anyone who listens. I'm glad Memphis is changing course, but think of all the illiterate adults who are products of the system.

Sold a Story; 12/26/22, 3:29 PM
n.n said...: We read with deductive and inferential logic, recognize letters through correlation, words through deconstruction and lookup, and sentences through construction and context. We train our neural model, our smart system, through repetition and adjust with feedback.; 12/26/22, 3:45 PM
Carol said...: "Why does it feel like the education system was created yesterday?"

Evidently there is a new improved district-wide *Education Initiative* every freaking year, the old lean-in BS. Then it's all forgotten and a new initiative comes along.

The outside ed consultants pushing this horseshit really make buck.; 12/26/22, 4:02 PM
Steven said...: ConradBibby wrote: "The issue of teen illiteracy isn't going to be solved by choosing teaching method "A" over teaching method "B.""

In fact, it probably is. We have known how to teach reading for a long time: phonics. Unfortunately, the educational establishment has hated it since the early 20th century. Intelligent children will learn to read by intuiting the phonics. Unfortunately, the below average children will not. They need to be directly schooled in it.

In my neighborhood in Baltimore in the late 1990s, the local failing public grade school was about to be shut down. Instead, a new principal was brought it and given a free hand regarding curriculum. For reading, she had the teachers use "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 EZ Lessons," a direct instruction method that has repeatedly been demonstrated to work. She turned the failing school around, and had the 4th highest performing grade school in the city by the time my daughter was starting school in 2009, despite the fact that the student body was largely drawn from a housing project. Virtually all students (95%) were reading at or above grade level on the Maryland tests.

Unfortunately, her success attracted the attention of the gentrified parents who did not want to pay for private schools. The school soon had many gentrified students. But the gentrified parents failed to understand what the principal had been doing, so when she retired, the parents helped pick the new principal, who promptly began disassembling the program put in place by the former principal. The new principal lasted less than a year. Again, the gentrified parents helped select the replacement, who completed the dismantling of the program. When it junked the direct instruction methodology, I believe the school adopted the new reading program that the city was then using, a balanced reading program. It did not work at that school, or in the rest of the city. The school soon was just another average Baltimore City school.

Fortunately, I had the good sense to homeschool my daughter, using a direct instruction method.

Methodology makes a huge difference. As has been noted, teaching phonics is boring. "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 EZ Lessons" is especially boring for the teacher, since the teacher's part is entirely scripted and the teacher is not allowed to deviate from the script. Thus, teachers hate it and look for more creative and interesting methodologies, which have repeatedly been shown not to work as well as strict phonics.; 12/26/22, 4:09 PM
Josephbleau said...: When I took German in undergrad, the instructor said, German is easy, 3 year old German kids all learn it. As a child of the 60s is really don’t remember phonics. We just read books. When you got tired of Dick and Jane there was a little library in back that had biographies of US Grant, Napoleon and Pasteur etc. They helped you see how to plan your life out. I think the best thing for reading is the daily 10 word vocabulary test. Break it down into blocks and memorize.; 12/26/22, 4:12 PM
gilbar said...: Joe Smith said...
Millions of kids learned phonics and 'sounding out' the letters/words and it worked perfectly well.
Why fuck with it?

Why? Because! Because They DON'T WANT people to know how to read (or, GOD Forbid; understand numbers)
Once You Realize, that; The Whole Point of "education", is to make sure people aren't educated;
it All makes Much More Sense.
Stupid People; Are Reliable People. If you Can't Read.. You CAN'T Read up on things.
The Government WANTS you to be STUPID. Can't get That? They'll settle for your children being stupid; 12/26/22, 4:42 PM
Howard said...: That's why parents need to teach there chitlins readin writin and rhythmatic.; 12/26/22, 4:49 PM
Mingus Jerry said...: We could've saved time and money and taught generations to read if we stuck students in front of Electric Company re-runs.; 12/26/22, 5:24 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: I've always heard that if kids are read to before bedtime, they will do much better than kids who aren't.; 12/26/22, 5:35 PM
Owen said...: I think one problem with reading is we (should)!learn to do it so early that as teachers and taxpayers we forget how exciting it was; how much power it gave us to decode those marks on the page so that not only could we please teacher and parents, we could also please ourselves. We could disappear into text after text, devour stories and travel through adventures with hundreds of protagonists. And we could study grown-up stuff as well.

Nothing was hidden. What a rush. But we got used to it, grew up, moved on. And maybe lost our taste for reading in favor of video or other forms of enlightenment and entertainment. So that when the new educational overlords came to town with fancy new ways to teach kids how to learn to read, we took it on faith that it would be like our own (dimly remembered) experience —only better. Because Progress, right?

And so the con went on.

I am teaching my grandson phonics. It’s quality time and we do it in little bites, because he’s got lots of competing interests and there’s no rush. He’ll be two in March.; 12/26/22, 5:45 PM
J L Oliver said...: Marta Collins, the incredible teacher from Chicago, swore by phonics for the inner city kids she taught.; 12/26/22, 6:01 PM
james said...: I'm told little kids are better at memorization than older kids. If so, start with phonics memorization and drill early, and use other fad techniques _if they turn out to be needed_ later.
It's tempting to look back at how I learned in school, and how my younger sister learned (we both had chickenpox, time on our hands, and a book on phonics, and I went over it with her), but I don't think we, or most of our hostess's guests, are typical.; 12/26/22, 6:04 PM
Duty of Inquiry said...: Now do math.; 12/26/22, 6:31 PM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: Ed schools started down this path a century ago and more, relying on the idea that there is an "art" to teaching that teachers knew and could pass on to others via mentoring, and that the educators did not have to pay any attention to other disciplines. Educational journals will not publish quantitative research about didactics, only about social problems and attitudes. They do not consider it their job to teach children to read, but to become Good Citizens - an idea which has changed in definition over the years.

This is why it is also false for we who are conservatives to try to fix things by reverting to older methods. The schools also sucked in the 1960s, filled with useless trash like penmanship, students reading aloud one at a time while the others sat silently doing nothing, coloring in pictures of Bolivia or parts of the cell rather than learning anything about either (because the teachers prized neatness and following directions more than knowledge). Designed by women for girls. Fold your hands and sit quietly if you finish your math problems early. A shameful waste of time. But it has been since the days of Tom Sawyer. The better students find a way to learn something no matter what. The docile are unfairly rewarded, the active unfairly disapproved of, but mostly it's just a waste of everyone's time.

Phonics does work, but those trained in Ed departments are often surprised to know that this research even exists. They were never taught that. They were told that their job is to instill a love of reading and the rest will follow.; 12/26/22, 6:59 PM
Carol said...: It's unclear to me if phonics is being taught again or not. There are only 13,000 school district policies out there...Hard to generalize and our kids are long out of school.

But teachers all seem to loathe some reading guru named Lucy Calkins, who apparently made a mint selling curricula. Genius!; 12/26/22, 7:00 PM
Carol said...: I'm old enough to remember when Why Johnny Can't Read was a bestseller.

It seemed personal because I had a brother named Johnny who probably couldn't read well.; 12/26/22, 7:03 PM
madAsHell said...: My mother had me reading before kindergarten. Depending on some teacher to teach reading is madness.; 12/26/22, 7:25 PM
Steven said...: JosephBleau: If you were reading Dick and Jane, you were not learning phonics. The Dick and Jane readers were a version of the whole word methodology. Basically, the child was to memorize "sight words" based on the pattern of the shapes of the letters, not their sound. That is why the sentences were short and repeated the same word over and over again. Thus a child could learn to "read" the word "look" and "book," but have no idea how to read "cook," "nook," or "took." There was a list of the key "sight words," the Dolch List. I think it had about 500 words. Dr Seuss's big innovation with Cat in the Hat was that he used only words from the Dolch List. If you memorized the shape of those 500 words, you could "read" Cat in the Hat.

Children who learn phonics have problems reading Dr. Seuss because many of the words have letter patterns that do not come until late in the phonics curriculum (especially words with "r-controlled vowels," e.g. fur, stir, car).; 12/26/22, 7:25 PM
Martin said...: Today "Backed by Science" generally means no actual science was involved.; 12/26/22, 7:33 PM
Maynard said...: Learning to define words in context of what you are reading will fuck up your SAT Verbal scores.

That can be the difference between a mediocre 600 and a much better 750.

Of course, it is racist to use those scores for college admit, but what the heck.; 12/26/22, 7:36 PM
rowrrbazzle said...: From August 2022: How Oakland, CA schools changed from phonics, watched reading scores drop, and are now going back to phonics.

https://time.com/6205084/phonics-science-of-reading-teachers/

"...the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people... If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." —A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, the 1983 report of the United States National Commission on Excellence in Education.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Nation_at_Risk; 12/26/22, 8:41 PM
Narr said...: Memphis schools have a history of short-tenured top administrators who come in like lions and leave as soon as they get a better offer, or the incompetence/corruption/harem-collecting (every Black guy hired) become too obvious, whichever comes first.

A recent one was famous for her warcry--"Every student college bound, every day." Just imagine the lack of understanding and arrogance packed into that.

I graduated from a "good" Memphis high school in '71, and my son ditto in '04. It was pretty easy for us, and has been dumbed down even more since.; 12/26/22, 8:45 PM
n.n said...: Method is one tunable variable in a multi-variate problem.; 12/26/22, 9:14 PM
iowan2 said...: prompting children to use context clues — such as pictures — to guess words,

About 1990, we went to our 1st grade daughter Parent teach conference. Teacher said all was great. Perfect student, doing great, interacts well with teachers and students, everyone likes her. We said great. But, when she is reading to us, she comes to a word she doesn't know, she just guesses. Teacher said no problem. We said we stop and make her sound it out. The teacher said we will break her desire to read. We ignored her. She turned into a ravenous reader, and also created a daughter now 12.5 YO that is reading about 5 books a week if her weekends aren't too busy.

Here's the deal. Parents are responsible to make sure their kids are readers. Don't push this off on the teachers. Only parents can influence the 1st 4 years of school; 12/26/22, 9:48 PM
Gahrie said...: In other words, teachers coming out of 4 years of college that teach "methods" and child psychology but can't write a coherent and grammatically correct sentence to save their lives, are happy to rely upon pictures and "storytelling".

When I signed my first contract to teach, I was assigned to a Social Studies/Language Arts position in the middle school. I would see the kids for a double block, one period of SS, one of LA. First staff meeting: "I better not ever see a Social Studies or Science book open all year." First inservice we were discussing literacy strategies and I mentioned sentence diagramming. Only one other teacher knew what it was, and she couldn't do it. My best friend (who was a teacher and is now an administrator) graduated from a local high school and went to USC. He's never read a Shakespeare work in his life. (He was completely flabbergasted when I told him Jon Snow wasn't the first person to be killed that way)

I assign readings in my High School US History class, and give the kids questions to answer based on the reading. I even showed them how they could go online and have the textbook read itself to them like an audiobook. 80% of the kids skip the reading type the question into google, and cut and paste whether it makes sense or not. Out of 35 kids, 15 will turn in identical answers, not because they were copying each other, but they were all googling. They'll leave hyperlinks in the answers. (Thanks to my districts grading policies, I get to give all of them at least 50% anyway.); 12/26/22, 10:16 PM
Lawnerd said...: Every day I read a new news article that makes me happy I am old. I really wouldn’t want to have to grow up today as a cis het male. The 70s weren’t so bad in retrospect.; 12/27/22, 3:00 AM
R C Belaire said...: Phonics => Fonix. I mean, why not?; 12/27/22, 5:51 AM
iowan2 said...: The Dick and Jane readers were a version of the whole word methodology. Basically, the child was to memorize "sight words" based on the pattern of the shapes of the letters, not their sound

Yes! Dick and Jane were sight reading method. I cant for the life of me, understand who thought sight reading was a viable path.

One of the grand daughters was was self taught how to sight read. She loved being read to. At around 4- 4 1/2 she could read a hand full of books back to us. Grandma would work a little phonics into the mix when we were together. Entering into kindergarten, she was reading at the top of 2cnd grade level. She also had 3 older brothers to copy. And she is the, smartest of the a smart group. Perfect storm of building a great reader.; 12/27/22, 6:17 AM
iowan2 said...: Phonics => Fonix. I mean, why not?

Absolutely!

Phonics get you, ghoti = fish

tough

women

motion; 12/27/22, 6:32 AM
Laughing Fox said...: Yes, phonics. And phonics is taught, In Chicago, for instance. But more is needed--the gradual development of background knowledge. A theory strongly influencing teaching reading now is training students in some of the mental processes involved in comprehension, such as drawing inferences, figuring out word meanings from context, anticipating and making predictions as ou read.
The trouble is, these are taught separately, though in reading one doesn't do them separately, and they are taught using a succession of short texts (published by major textbook companies) that are unrelated. So this week the kiddos read about mummies, and next week Japanese lanterns, and another week Viking ships. There is no connection between the texts, so students do not build a body of knowledge about any subject--in this case, about human societies.
So reading can seem rather pointless, and the students do not bring to the next thing they read any knowledge that they can relate it to. Reading a steady stream of social studies or science or history in early grades (yes, 1st grade!) would help students develop an interest in reading and knowledge that will make more complex text more comprehensible.; 12/27/22, 7:12 AM
Laughing Fox said...: Yes, phonics. And phonics is taught, In Chicago, for instance. But more is needed--the gradual development of background knowledge. A theory strongly influencing teaching reading now is training students in some of the mental processes involved in comprehension, such as drawing inferences, figuring out word meanings from context, anticipating and making predictions as ou read.
The trouble is, these are taught separately, though in reading one doesn't do them separately, and they are taught using a succession of short texts (published by major textbook companies) that are unrelated. So this week the kiddos read about mummies, and next week Japanese lanterns, and another week Viking ships. There is no connection between the texts, so students do not build a body of knowledge about any subject--in this case, about human societies.
So reading can seem rather pointless, and the students do not bring to the next thing they read any knowledge that they can relate it to. Reading a steady stream of social studies or science or history in early grades (yes, 1st grade!) would help students develop an interest in reading and knowledge that will make more complex text more comprehensible.; 12/27/22, 7:14 AM
Sean said...: The whole language approach to teaching reading is an old time progressive idea. Some of it comes from the research done on how to teach deaf people to read.

When whole language was debunked, its adherents came up with a new way to sell it - balanced literacy. I mean, who could argue with balance. And it continues to do damage.

Elementary education is a solved problem. Effective techniques have been available since the 70's with marginal improvements since then. The fact that education continues to be so bad shows that progress in human affairs is not guaranteed.; 12/27/22, 7:17 AM
Marcus Bressler said...: I was an excellent reader as a youth. I devoured first comic books then easy reading such as the Hardy Boys series. The former increased my vocabulary ("infamous", "solitude", and "cataclysmic" come to mind) at five years old. I read newspapers from start to finish at 7 years of age and had trouble checking out books from the school library that the librarian assumed were above my supposed reading level. One, a fourth grade book, was denied to me as I was in second grade and it was determined to be "too hard" for me. Ironically I had read that same book at a an older cousins house earlier that summer and I liked it so much I want to read it again.
I was brought up on phonics and though I found it boring, it must have had some effect on me. My parents read to me all the time from my toddler years until I was six. I did the same for my daughters growing up and "daddy reading (me) a book" was a treat for them. I made up voices for the different characters. (continued on next post due to word length restrictions); 12/27/22, 7:23 AM
Marcus Bressler said...: Upshot of this post is that we subscribed to "Hook on Phonics" for my youngest and she became a vivacious reader -- enjoying all of Shakespeare's plays to her dad's dismay -- and has inherited my 80% approximate semi-total recall of things she reads. It comes in handy as she reads scripts for plays, television commercials and dramas-on-stage in her career as an actress.
I hated Dick and Jane. I was reading two grade levels above that and I was already developing satirical versions in my mind of the material offered. It wasn't until SRA Reading Laboratories in elementary school that tested reading comprehension with very short articles that convinced my teacher to let me progress at an accelerated level as opposed to the rest of the class. Except for a fellow student named Gilbert C. who always was one reading level about me. Try as I might, I could briefly catch up to him but he jumped ahead by the end off the session. Ego showed it's head early on.
(continued); 12/27/22, 7:26 AM
Marcus Bressler said...: Upshot of this post is that we subscribed to "Hook on Phonics" for my youngest and she became a vivacious reader -- enjoying all of Shakespeare's plays to her dad's dismay -- and has inherited my 80% approximate semi-total recall of things she reads. It comes in handy as she reads scripts for plays, television commercials and dramas-on-stage in her career as an actress.
I hated Dick and Jane. I was reading two grade levels above that and I was already developing satirical versions in my mind of the material offered. It wasn't until SRA Reading Laboratories in elementary school that tested reading comprehension with very short articles that convinced my teacher to let me progress at an accelerated level as opposed to the rest of the class. Except for a fellow student named Gilbert C. who always was one reading level about me. Try as I might, I could briefly catch up to him but he jumped ahead by the end off the session. Ego showed it's head early on.
I credited two things for my ability to write: first as a reporter/journalist, then an editor (for others and then for myself and my dad on our family newspaper when I was 21) to my vivacious love of reading. I learned sentence structure, word usage and definition, and how to tell as story. The other was an inheritance of my father's writing ability for which I am eternally greatful. As a merchant mariner he did the old trick of writing interesting and "beautiful" letters that he rented to other sailors to send home to their wives or sweeties (or both). It described life about ship and the different ports of all -- all coded so a shipmate would not send the same letter twice.; 12/27/22, 7:30 AM
Marcus Bressler said...: believe I mentioned prior in this space that as an 80th birthday gift, my siblings and I put together an 80 page books of his reminisces and essays, selected photos to accompany the written segments and included essays from me and my siblings as well as his grandchildren. I hope to do the same without my remaining daughter's involvement.
And phonics was a great contributor to my reading and writing ability. I no longer write letters but short emails and that saddens me. But I am tied up with two books in progress and a 421-page autobiography I an proofreading and editing for a friend.
"See Marcus run. Run, Marcus, run. She Jane run away from Marcus. Run, Jane, run. Spot looks on and it perplexed at the scene of a brother chasing his younger sister.
On a final note, I have written over 400 blurbs that I have posted on FB and now started to offer to Instapundit. They revolved around my five-year relationship with a younger, ditsy blonde who has lived with me on and off for the past five years and are meant to be funny. YMMV. I put together a 60 page books of those posts to gift her and to keep one for my grandchildren to join in unison with, "Grandpa was quite weird, wasn't he?"
I will leave you with one of my many favorites FWB posts:
Me: Bitching about the choice of SuperBowl halftime entertainmentr would _you_ had chosed?
Me: (pause) I'd tell yo
FWB: Well, what performeu but I'd be dating myself.
FWB: (pause) WTF does that even means?
FWB: Are we breaking up?; 12/27/22, 7:32 AM
Eleanor said...: Most kids who are early readers do not learn to read using much of the phonics method. Most of them learned to read so young they don't remember ever not knowing how to read. Much like kids born with a strong number sense understand mathematical relationships innately. Drilling either group, whether it's hours of making kids sound out words, or making them write out every step of a math problem is wasting their time. If you required more than minimal direct instruction to learn to read or struggled with math beyond simple calculations, then you might think "drill and kill" works for everyone, but a bigger question is what could the kids who don't need hours of classroom direct instruction be doing instead? If a first grader can read a 100 page chapter book, why is he doing phonics worksheets? Reading is such an easy place to sort the kids and then differentiate the teaching. The issue isn't whether phonics or whole language is best. It's why do all kids have to learn to read the same way?; 12/27/22, 8:35 AM
Eleanor said...: Most kids who are early readers do not learn to read using much of the phonics method. Most of them learned to read so young they don't remember ever not knowing how to read. Much like kids born with a strong number sense understand mathematical relationships innately. Drilling either group, whether it's hours of making kids sound out words, or making them write out every step of a math problem is wasting their time. If you required more than minimal direct instruction to learn to read or struggled with math beyond simple calculations, then you might think "drill and kill" works for everyone, but a bigger question is what could the kids who don't need hours of classroom direct instruction be doing instead? If a first grader can read a 100 page chapter book, why is he doing phonics worksheets? Reading is such an easy place to sort the kids and then differentiate the teaching. The issue isn't whether phonics or whole language is best. It's why do all kids have to learn to read the same way?; 12/27/22, 8:36 AM
Richard Aubrey said...: The alphabet, whatever language, whatever era, whatever century, was designed for adults. You put marks on...maybe paper...to transfer information to someone not present. The marks represent sounds. The recipient sounds it out and matches it with something he knows.
You can teach an illiterate shade-tree mechanic and an urban six-year old to sound out "carburetor" with two, separate results. Useful to the first, meaningless to the kid.

You have to know what the word you sound out actually means.

The following subject is and was the subject of a good deal of argumentation.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190404074947.htm There's a lot on the web about it and related issues.

This is the "million-word gap". Or the four hundred thousand word gap. Or....some other number to which kids have been exposed and many of which they understand, or not. But if they don't, sounding it out is only the first step.

And, as usual, the advantages go to kids in some cultures and family situations and not to those in others.; 12/27/22, 8:46 AM
Craig Howard said...: If you were reading Dick and Jane, you were not learning phonics. The Dick and Jane readers were a version of the whole word methodology. Basically, the child was to memorize "sight words" based on the pattern of the shapes of the letters, not their sound. That is why the sentences were short and repeated the same word over and over again. Thus a child could learn

I suppose the Dick and Jane books could have been used that way but my school taught phonics and used the saga of Dick and Jane to reinforce it. The constant repetition was to drill the words into our young skulls full of mush until we no longer had to sound them out.

The process of reading became, as Ayn Rand put it, automatized.; 12/27/22, 10:20 AM
Narr said...: I was a precocious reader too--Dick and Jane were just another aspect of the organized absurdity that was public ed in the 1960s, not the key to literacy for me. If there was a pedagogical theory behind those noobs, it makes it all the worse.

Neither of my parents were big readers (except for the two daily papers) but there were books around, and my aunt Louise in particular read histories and biographies and encouraged my own interests.

I recall My Weekly Reader of course, and in the sixth grade there was a readings program that sounds like something somebody mentioned above--letting the kids choose topics and advance at their own pace--and I met one of my BFFs at the pinnacle.

Our public and school libraries were pretty good, and once I proved I could read adult history books about age 11 I had free rein to check out what I wanted.

At the end of the year we had to turn in our textbooks. Sometimes I was allowed-required to help inventory. After four or five years with us, I discovered, it being Memphis, they went to the B/black schools.; 12/27/22, 11:30 AM